


even the darkest night will end

by citadelofswords



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Captain America: The Winter Soldier Spoilers, Gen, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, i just want bucky to remember again can you tell, those last four are there for like a second
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-07
Updated: 2014-04-07
Packaged: 2018-01-18 14:06:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1431277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/citadelofswords/pseuds/citadelofswords
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"No," Bucky grits out. "I don't know who Bucky Barnes is. I know that I knew you."</p><p>Winter Soldier spoilers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	even the darkest night will end

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is just proof that I have no real ability for writing anything long. Or understanding how people recover from tragedy. I'm sorry. I had a lot of emotions after Winter Soldier.
> 
> Maybe I'll write more for this, go a little more in-depth. Depends on the reaction I get.
> 
> Unbeta'd. All mistakes are mine. And I wrote over the whole day, on my iPod mostly, so there will probably be a LOT of mistakes.

Bucky goes underground after the dissolution of SHIELD and the discovery of HYDRA within its inner workings.

His mission is to stay alive. He doesn’t know who he can go to if he needs to fix his arm, but he finds he doesn't actually care much. He finds a lost sweatshirt on a bench in the Smithsonian mall and pulls it on to hide the metal workings. After a few days out of cryo, out of danger of HYDRA finding him, he starts to relax a little. But with the relaxation comes the constant fear that someone or something will try to find him, since they haven’t yet, and it doesn’t make sense.

Someone is kind enough to give him a new pair of pants and a t-shirt emblazoned with Captain America's shield. He wears it under his battered old jacket. The armor, he dumps in the river.

He sees Steve on the news, sometimes. Recognition always flares, but he still can't equate himself with Bucky Barnes, the man in the exhibit at the Smithsonian. It just doesn’t make sense- _Bucky_ fell to his death. He has always been a machine.

He gets a haircut. He brings a picture to the place he goes to and the hairdresser chirps happily that "someone is finally beginning to see the value in the lesser heroes!" And then she notes his similarity to the fallen soldier. He just shrugs listlessly. (He hasn’t figured out how to explain that yet.)

Of course it's the same place that Steve goes to. Of course.

Steve stops him before he can slink away. "Please." he says quietly. "Please. I know you don't remember me..."

"No," Bucky grits out. "I don't know who Bucky Barnes is. I know that I knew you."

Steve blinks at him, and Bucky can see that there's a hint of a smile playing around his lips that doesn’t quite break free.

"I've been looking for you for three weeks," Steve says, finally. "Just come home with me? Please?"

Bucky knows it's probably a bad idea. But there is no HYDRA ordering him to kill this man. And he's still wondering why he saved his life. So he goes.

 

* * *

 

Steve shows him Disney movies. That's the first thing that he could think of that he remembers seeing with Bucky, just the two of them. His relief is probably distinctly obvious when Bucky laughs in all the right places and hums the exact songs Steve remembers him liking so much.

After the four they saw in the forties, Steve finally dares to watch the other Disney movies SHIELD had given him that he had never wanted to see. Disney had always been his and Bucky's thing, and it had never felt right to watch them without him. Now, however...

Bucky really, really likes Aladdin. And he sings Tangled songs, off-key, in the shower when he thinks Steve can't hear him. With every day that passes, he begins to act a little more like the old Bucky. Steve is eternally grateful.

But he still doesn’t remember. He never calls Steve by name. He doesn’t even call him Captain America. He just blinks at him sullenly until Steve asks him what he wants. The silence is disconcerting.

Movies are their gateway into normalcy. It’s also the first hint that HYDRA had a deeply scarring effect on Bucky’s sanity. They're watching Star Wars the first time Sam comes around. He looks at Bucky, and then the screen, and he flips out. "You're watching them in the wrong order!" he yelps, and Bucky is off the couch faster than lightning.

It takes Steve half an hour to coax him down from the cabinet, after which Sam apologizes for scaring him and they settle down to watch the saga "properly", as Sam puts it.

Bucky skitters away again when Han Solo is lowered into the carbonite. Sam grudgingly allows his precious viewing order to be sacrificed in order that Bucky can see Leia get him out safely- it's the only way to bring him down from the cabinets again. When she tells Han she loves him, Bucky's eyes flick momentarily to Steve and away again.

After Star Wars, it becomes clear that post-HYDRA Bucky is an overgrown cat mixed with a terrified five-year-old. Steve learns to leave notes around the house if he has to leave for some reason. Sam swings around sometimes when Steve leaves, and one day Steve comes home to find Bucky and Natasha playing an intense game of Operation. The door shuts and Bucky jumps, knocking the tweezers into the side and setting off the buzzer. Natasha laughs.

Steve settles down with them and watches, until the door opens and in spills Sam and Clint, of all people, pizza boxes balanced precariously in their hands.

Sam tells Steve, in low undertones, that he’s been working with Bucky to combat the post-traumatic stress that comes with brainwashing. “He’s making damn good progress,” Sam mumbles. “He’s started to ask after the Howling Commandos. He asked yesterday, and I gotta know… who’s Peggy?”

Steve sighs. It’s progress, but it’s still not Bucky remembering who he is.

Bucky buries himself in a cocoon of pillows at night, at Steve’s recommendation. One of the very first nights Bucky stayed he had a nightmare that caused him to swing out at the wall in a panic- clearly he was more used to dreaming in stasis, when he was immobile. Steve promised the landlord he would fix the hole himself out of pocket and ventured back into the apartment, only to find Bucky had tucked himself into a ball and was staring at a point about a foot away from the floor.

In all that padding, most of the time, Bucky’s pained sounds are muffled. Not tonight. Steve has to tear the nest to pieces to untangle Bucky from the knot he’d worked himself into.

“Hey- HEY! Buck, wake up!” Steve yells, and dodges the fist that swings at his face. “Bucky, Bucky, it’s me, it’s Captain America, do you hear me? Wake up! That is an ORDER, soldier!”

Bucky snaps awake with a huff, eyes wide and staring wildly around him. His breathing begins to increase and Steve pins his struggling limbs down firmly.

“Who are you?” Steve snarls.

“I don’t know- I don’t know!” Bucky yelps.

“Fine. Do you know where you are right now?”

“I’m at Steve’s apartment,” Bucky says, and his voice sounds so much like the old Bucky’s it hurts. “I’m at Steve’s… it’s the twenty-first century and I have a metal arm.”

“That’s right.” Steve says. Bucky is at least beginning to calm down. “We took down HYDRA over two months ago. They’re gone, Pierce is _gone._ You’re safe here, Bucky. You’re safe here.”

“Bucky.” His lips form the name, eyebrows furrowed, and Steve has a spark of hope that maybe he’s finally getting through to him.

He takes Bucky to Tony that day to have work done on his arm. Tony goes scarily quiet when Steve explains the situation to him and then he nods seriously. He cracks jokes, but he’s careful to steer clear of topics that could send Bucky into a haze and soon enough they’re joking like they’ve known each other for years.

Bucky suddenly nods at a portrait on the back wall. “Stark,” he says quietly. “I knew the guy. Bit of a pretentious asshole, from what I remember.”

“Not too good with kids,” Tony says breezily, nails between his teeth. “Okay, Buck, that should do it.”

Bucky flexes all of his fingers and grins at them and _there he is_. That’s Bucky, right there in the sly smirk and the sparkle in his eye. Steve has to leave the room.

When he comes back, he hears Tony say, “Steve’s a good friend, you know. He’s been looking out for you, even after everything.”

“He’s my best friend,” Bucky says firmly, and Steve’s knees buckle. “And maybe I don’t remember much of what came before cryo, but I know that much.”

Tony laughs. “Well, I think that’s all you really need to know.”

 

* * *

_  
one year later_

Their apartment is under attack. Sam is outside shooting at people and Bucky has a mission- find Steve.

Steve’s already suited up, searching for his shield. “It’s HYDRA, it has to be,” he yells, over the cacophony, and there’s a stab of fear in Bucky’s chest. “They’re still around, I’m sorry, I’ll take you to Tony’s, it’ll be safe there.”

“Safe?” Bucky bites out. “ _This_ was supposed to be safe!”

“I know, I’m sorry!” Steve says. “I failed again, I know, I’m sorry!”

“You didn’t fail before, shut up!” Bucky snaps back, and Steve freezes dead solid for a moment before he shakes himself. Fire is licking at the walls of Steve’s room and Bucky has never been more terrified for anyone other than himself.

“Look, just get out of here!” Steve calls, even as burning timber is falling around him.

“NO!” Bucky’s voice rises in a panic. “ _Not without you!_ ”

There it is. There’s what’s been missing. A laboratory, the Red Skull. Steve being a helluva lot taller than Bucky remembered him being, the last time he saw him. Their easy rapport. Steve smiling like he hadn’t heard a joke in the months since Bucky had left for war. Steve, _Steve_ , his best friend since forever, who he’d always had to pull out of fights with bullies. He’d become the bully on the playground, HYDRA had turned him into that, hadn’t they?

Steve stares at him like he’s seeing him for the first time.

“I’m with you.” Bucky gasps out and he flexes his metal fingers and ground them into the door. “Til the end of the line.”

Steve’s face splits into a wide grin.

 

* * *

 

“Is this some kind of payback for that last mission on Zola’s train?” Steve yells, slamming his shield into an agent’s face. Bucky pauses for a moment.

“…Maybe?”

**Author's Note:**

> The Disney thing comes from [this wonderful post that made me cry](http://snafflebithumptywink.tumblr.com/post/81708496508/tbh-the-best-marvel-headcanon-ive-ever-imagined).
> 
>  EDIT: Holy shit. Holy SHIT. Someone wrote something that was inspired by this? It was totally because of the Disney thing but STILL. WHAT EVEN. 
> 
> [Come say hi.](citadelofswords.tumblr.com)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Tony Stark Despairs of these Supersoldiers, He Really Does](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2230410) by [boomslang](https://archiveofourown.org/users/boomslang/pseuds/boomslang)




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